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Michael Howard, Life-long Gamer / Business Analyst

I'm very impressed.

It appears that Sony is leveraging its Gaikai purchase to its maximum potential, which will allow them to expand in intelligent ways, including tackling the kinds of experiences emerging young gamers are into.

This is in no way "a traditional console"

When Sony promises that you will be able to stream your PS4 games to iOS and Android devices, you know that they are at least aware of the changes the world is going through. They have met Microsoft's SmartGlass technology with this promise, allowing games and content to reach out to a second screen. There has been no other console in history that I could just log into and access my games from any device.

Other answers suggest that the day of the big blockbuster game is behind us. Even if that's true, that's fine. PS4 will be perfectly capable of playing the same popular mobile games available on platforms like iOS and Android, just like the PS3 and Vita already do. Another strong example of this notion is Sony's PlayStation Suite initiative on Android. Over the last 16 years, Sony has proven that it loves a good game, regardless of its graphical prowess.

Sony is courting smaller developers.

Sony wants to make it even easier for independent developers to bring their games to the PlayStation world. This is where growth is happening and Sony is welcoming it with open arms.

Sony courted developers and their advice while designing the PS4. This is most powerfully highlighted by the fact that Mark Cerny is the Lead System Architect -- Amazing! To add to that, Dave Perry is the CEO of Gaikai. This is an incredible pedigree, and if you think those legends have just been bought off, take it up with Carmack: ID_AA_Carmack: I can’t speak freely about ...

If executed, Gaikai will be an amazing game-changer, not available anywhere else

Suddenly, I can watch any of my friends playing a game live. I can jump in and help them through a tough part if they need me to. I can share a video instantly, or livestream just as easy. I can turn on my console and immediately be right back in the last game I was playing at the same point. I can purchase a game from the store and begin playing it before it's downloaded.

These are amazing features that I think a lot of lay-people simply can't grasp the importance of right now.

Seriously, Instant-On is a Big Deal

Sony said aloud that their dream is to eliminate the load time. With Gaikai this is possible. Being able to switch through games like changing channels will mean more people use their PS4 more often.

PlayStation 4 meets WiiU functionality

Sony said they would detail their initiative to bring Vita into the living room later this year, effectively making the Vita a WiiU gamepad.

PlayStation 4 meets Kinect functionality

Sony showed the new PlayStation Eye, which has two cameras, and offers kinect-style functionality.

PlayStation®4 Eye, a newly developed camera for PS4 incorporates two high-sensitive cameras that have wide-angle lenses with 85-degree diagonal angle views which can recognize the depth of space precisely. This enables PlayStation®4 Eye to cut out the image of the player from the background, or to grasp players' position in front and behind, further broadening the ways to enjoy games. Incorporated four microphones are also capable of accurate sound detection and source origination. In addition, users will be able to login to their PS4 with face recognition and are capable of using their own body movements or voices to enjoy games more intuitively. Furthermore, PlayStation®4 Eye senses the color of DUALSHOCK®4's light bar to judge the positions of multiple players, and set characters in the same positions or let a character talk to a particular player, enabling players to enjoy games in new way.

The new DualShock 4 looks like a blast to get a hold of. It's been redesigned to be more comfortable, all the sticks and triggers are said to be tighter and more responsive, and the rumble function has been improved. There's a touchpad on top, which will allow mimicking of a touchscreen device. There's a built in speaker and a "lightbar" on the top, which adds so much cool functionality...

And just look at this thing and tell me you don't want to pick it up!

Lightbar on the DualShock 4

This lightbar has 3 LEDs which allow for millions of possible color combinations. This can be used in soooo many creative ways it almost hurts. First, a different color could designate players 1-4 in conjunction with on-screen graphics. The light can flash red when you're hit, filling up a dark room with light. The cameras can track the controller, so if an in-game character needs to talk to one of four players, the character will look directly at that player in the room. Also, in conjunction with the speaker built into the controller, this could be use for some amazing 3D positional sound effects.

Industry Standard Architecture

Sony, finally, is making a PlayStation that's easy to develop for with more RAM than a Titan. They've done well in the past with consoles that were a nightmare to code for, so I'm interested to see how this plays out for them.

Unlimited Cloud-based Processing Power

The real eye-openers will come when Sony starts building games that utilize the Gaikai server farm for the heavy-lifting. Granted, all games won't work this way, but the ones that do should be quite revolutionary. Even still, there's a chance that disc-based games could be enhanced with the processing power of the farm in connected cases.

In Conclusion

From my perspective, they seem to be covering everything, and I can't really think of what else they could have done. I'd love to hear suggestions in the comments, because based on a lot of the coverage I've read, there are many baseless complaints with no alternative solutions. People just want to feel smarter than Sony or something.

It appears to me that some people would have only been happy if Sony had announced a completely traditional, open-source PC or something. The service and experience Sony is promising simply can't be bought at Newegg -- and I don't want to live in a world of only crappy Android games.